Our Most Wonderful Beach Vacation

The beach!  It's one of the most wonderful places ever.  Last week, we spent a couple days in Port Aransas and enjoyed ourselves immensely.  We left here on Thursday in the rain and it rained almost the whole way there.  It messed up our plans a little, but we adjusted and had a great great time.

Grandma D is excited to be on the ferry!  It was great!

Huge ship that went by.

Seeing the sights on a fishing pier.

At the harbor.

Chasing off the seagulls!

There he goes again!

Lunch at a covered picnic table!  Breezy and rainy!

We ate lunch at the Robert Taylor Park in the harbor.  Zane was so excited he couldn't hardly eat.  Since it was still raining, we did the souveneir shop thing and Zane got a boogie board and a shrimp boat!  I thought he might be a little young, but he had the best time on it.  He is getting older-I have to tell myself that.  :)  Rachel picked out a purple shovel and she got to dig to her hearts content.  She liked the sand.

Last time we were in Port A, we saw the Marine Institiute, so I looked it up before we went and it is an educational place run the the University of Texas.  They had a kids area and Zane and Rachel's favorite spot was in the fishing boat, of course!  It was pretty cool-they had a huge skull of some type of whale, and different fish tanks with different species of fish in it.  We would have stayed longer, but all the bathrooms were closed because they were waxing the floors.  So, we had to leave a little early!

Learning about crab traps.

Hello, Rachey the sea turtle!

What a handsome sea turtle!

Looking at a crab.

Mom in front of a whale skull!

Pretty like the flowers.  :)

One of Jeff's favorite's of the trip was that day-we found an ice cream place!  It was great-inside out of the rain, and they had an air hockey table which Zane and Rachel loved!  Grandma D even got in on the fun of it, and so did Jeff and I!  Zane had chocolate ice cream, Rachel had chocolate ice cream with M&M's, I had chocolate chip cookie dough, Jeff had mint chocolate chip, and Grandma D got the last of the Rocky Road! 

After that, we went to Dollar General and picked up some groceries and then discovered our condo was cleaned and ready for us, so we quick went to the awesome grocery store on the island.  It was packed!  SOOOO many people, probably getting ready for the weekend! 

Then we went to our condo, brought our stuff in, changed clothes and headed to the beach!  It was perfect!!!  Not very many people and fairly cool.  The water actually felt warm!  Jeff got to swim in the ocean which he hadn't done for a long time.  There were tons of little shells, but nothing huge.  Still awesome.

We came in and ate chicken nuggets, french fries, and green beans for supper!  Then went to bed early because we were all so tired.

All clean from the beach and waiting for supper!

Breakfast Friday morning!

 Friday, we got up, went to the beach-all day long!  Grandma D even went back to the condo and make sandwiches for us.  I thought it was so nice and also thought that Jeff just wanted to have a picnic, but turns out he thought we might lose our spot on the beach!  It was getting very crowded.  The one thing I really liked was that there were tons of families there.  Lots and lots of little kids having the best time. 
Beware-lots of beach pictures!

She had no trouble going to sleep that night!  <3

Saturday was our last day and we decided to have another adventure-one that we were supposed to have on Thursday.  We took the Jetty boat over to San Jose Island!  That was an experience!  We woke the kids up at 5:30 (we have the best kids! :)) and got to the ferry boat to buy our tickets by 6:20 and we were on the first ferry over by 6:30!  We were crowded on there with all the fishermen and their carts.  It was so cool-and totally different from what we are used too.  We didn't find any really great shells-except mom-she found two beautiful, shiny olive shells.  They were the find of the day.

She had to smush all the heart.  :)  hahaha

She was feeding the seagulls!

Coming for more goldfish for the birds!

Jeff got to fish for a couple minutes on the Jetty, and we watched lots of sea turtles.  Then, we got back on the ferry at 10 am, which was perfect, because we were getting hot and tired.

We got back and there was Virginia's, a restaurant that Jeff likes-and it opened at 11.  We were early, so Jeff went in and very nicely asked the owner if we could come in and sit down.  He said yes and put us in the best spot over looking the harbor.  It was so pleasant and the breeze felt so good. 

What a fun vacation.  Can't wait for our next adventure!